The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  The frame used to sit on top of the piano that nobody played anymore, gathering dust. The fact that I never even noticed it was missing was a testament to the fact that I must have learned how to live again.

  Which is why I collected the clothes and put them into a shopping bag to take to the hospital: an outfit in which I sincerely hoped I would not bury my daughter, but instead, bring her back home.

  Lucius

  These nights, I slept well. There were no more sweats, no diarrhea, no fevers to keep me thrashing in my bunk. Crash Vitale was still in solitary, so his rants didn’t wake me. From time to time, the extra officer who’d been assigned to Shay for protection would prowl through the tier, his boots a soft-soled shuffle on the catwalk.

  I had been sleeping so well, in fact, that I was surprised I woke up to the quiet conversation going on in the cell next door to mine. “Will you just let me explain?” Shay asked. “What if there’s another way?”

  I waited to hear whom he was talking to, but there was no answer.

  “Shay?” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I tried to give away my heart,” I heard him say. “And look at what it turned into.” Shay kicked at the wall; something heavy in his cell tumbled to the floor. “I know what you want. But do you know what I want?”

  “Shay?”

  His voice was just a braid of breath. “Abba?”

  “It’s me. Lucius.”

  There was a beat of silence. “You were listening to my conversation.”

  Was it a conversation if you were having a monologue in your own cell? “I didn’t mean to . . . you woke me up.”

  “Why were you asleep?” Shay asked.

  “Because it’s three in the morning?” I replied. “Because that’s what you’re supposed to be doing?”

  “What I’m supposed to be doing,” Shay repeated. “Right.”

  There was a thud, and I realized Shay had fallen. The last time that had happened, he’d been having a seizure. I scrabbled underneath the bunk and pulled out the mirror-shank. “Shay,” I called out. “Shay?”

  In the reflection, I could see him. He was on his knees in the front of the cell, with his hands spread wide. His head was bowed, and he was bathed in sweat, which—from the dim crimson light on the catwalk—looked like beads of blood.

  “Go away,” he said, and I withdrew the mirror from the slats of my own door, giving him privacy.

  As I hid away my makeshift mirror, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection. Like Shay’s, my skin looked scarlet. And yet even that didn’t stop me from noticing the familiar ruby sore that had opened up once again across my forehead—a scar, a stain, a planet’s moving storm.

  MICHAEL

  Shay’s last foster mother, Renata Ledoux, was a Catholic who lived in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, and as I’d traveled up to meet with her, the irony of the name of the town where Shay had spent his teenage years did not escape me. I was wearing my collar and had on my gravest priest demeanor, because I was pulling out all the stops. I was going to say whatever was necessary to find out what had happened to Grace.

  As it turned out, though, it hardly took any work at all. Renata invited me in for tea, and when I told her I had a message for Grace from a person in my congregation, she simply wrote out an address and handed it to me. “We’re still in touch,” she said simply. “Gracie was a good girl.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder what she thought of Shay. “Didn’t she have a brother?”

  “That boy,” Renata had said, “deserves to burn in hell.”

  It was ludicrous to believe that Renata had not heard about Shay’s death sentence—the news would have reached up here, even in rural Bethlehem. I had thought, maybe, as his foster mother, she’d at least harbor some soft spot for him. But then again, the boy she’d raised had left her home to go to juvenile prison, and had grown up to become a convicted murderer. “Yes,” I’d said. “Well.”

  Now, twenty minutes later, I was approaching Grace’s house, and hoping for a better reception. It was the pink one with gray shutters and the number 131 on a carved stone at the end of the drive—but the shades were drawn, the garage door was closed. There were no plants hanging on the porch, no doors open for a breeze, no outgoing mail in the box—nothing to indicate that the inhabitant was home.

  I got out of my car and rang the doorbell. Twice.

  Well, I could leave a note and ask her to call me. It would take more time—time Shay did not really have—but if it was the best I could do, then so be it.

  Just then the door opened just a crack. “Yes?” a voice inside murmured.

  I tried to see into the foyer, but it was pitch-dark. “Does Grace Bourne live here?”

  A hesitation. “That’s me.”

  “I’m Father Michael Wright. I have a message for you, from one of the parishioners in my congregation.”

  A slender hand slipped out. “You can give it to me,” Grace said.

  “Actually, could I just come in for a bit—use your restroom? It’s been a long drive from Concord . . .”

  She hesitated—I suppose I would, too, if a strange man showed up at my door and I was a woman living alone, even if he was wearing a collar. But the door opened wide and Grace stepped back to let me in. Her head was ducked to the side; a long curtain of black hair hung over her face. I caught a glimpse of long dark lashes and a ruby of a mouth; you could tell, even at first glance, how pretty she must be. I wondered if she was agoraphobic, painfully shy. I wondered who had hurt her so much that she was afraid of the rest of the world.

  I wondered if it was Shay.

  “Grace,” I said, reaching for her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  She lifted her chin then, and the screen of hair fell back. The entire left side of Grace Bourne’s face was ravaged and pitted, a lava flow of skin that had been stretched and sewed to cover an extensive burn.

  “Boo,” she said.

  “I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”

  “Everyone stares,” Grace said quietly. “Even the ones who try not to.”

  There was a fire, Shay had said. I don’t want to talk about it.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, you said that already. The bathroom’s down the hall.”

  I put a hand on her arm. There were patches of skin there, too, that were scarred. “Grace. That message—it’s from your brother.”

  She took a step away from me, stunned. “You know Shay?”

  “He needs to see you, Grace. He’s going to die soon.”

  “What did he say about me?”

  “Not a lot,” I admitted. “But you’re the only family he has.”

  “Do you know about the fire?” Grace asked.

  “Yes. It was why he went to juvenile prison.”

  “Did he tell you that our foster father died in it?”

  This time, it was my turn to be surprised. A juvenile record would be sealed, which is why I hadn’t known during the capital murder trial what Shay had been convicted of. I’d assumed, when fire had been mentioned, that it was arson. I hadn’t realized that the charges might have included negligent homicide, or even manslaughter. And I understood exactly why, now, Renata Ledoux might viscerally hate Shay.

  Grace was staring at me intently. “Did he ask to see me?”

  “He doesn’t actually know I’m here.”

  She turned away, but not before I saw that she had started to cry. “He didn’t want me at his trial.”

  “He probably didn’t want you to have to witness that.”

  “You don’t know anything.” She buried her face in her hands.

  “Grace,” I said, “come back with me. Come see him.”

  “I can’t,” she sobbed. “I can’t. You don’t understand.”

  But I was beginning to: Shay had set the fire that had disfigured her. “That’s all the more reason to meet with him. Forgive him, before it’s too late.”

  “Forgive him? Forgive him?” Grace parroted. “No matte